Quote

So this is what I am Pondering his eyes that could not Conceive that I was a creature to run from I who have always believed too much in words

W. S. Merwin

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

W. S. Merwin
Age: 91 †
Born: 1927
Born: September 30
Died: 2019
Died: March 15
Poet
Translator
Writer
New York City
New York
William Stanley Merwin
Always
Creature
Believed
Creatures
Eyes
Eye
Words
Running
Pondering
Much
Conceive

More quotes by W. S. Merwin

Image
Poetry is a way of looking at the world for the first time.
W. S. Merwin
Image
There are aspects of human life that are not purely destructive, and there is a need to pay attention to the things around us while they are still around us. And you know, in a way, if you don't pay that attention, the anger is just bitterness.
W. S. Merwin
Image
To succeed [,] consider what is as though it were past, deem yourself inevitable and take credit for it. If you no longer believe, enlarge the temple.
W. S. Merwin
Image
Sitting over words Very late I have heard a kind of whispered sighing Not far Like a night wind in pines or like the sea in the dark The echo of everything that has ever Been spoken Still spinning its one syllable Between the earth and silence.
W. S. Merwin
Image
Laughter was the shape the darkness took around the first appearance of the light.
W. S. Merwin
Image
When a poem is really finished, you can't change anything. You can't move words around. You can't say, 'In other words, you mean.' No, that's not it. There are no other words in which you mean it. This is it.
W. S. Merwin
Image
The global warming is going on. These are not single cases. These are all part of a general way we've been looking at the world. As long as we look at the world that way it's going to go on. Because the idea that the important thing is for some people get rich while the rest of the people work for them is very deeply dug in...
W. S. Merwin
Image
I say to my breath once again, little breath come from in front of me, go away behind me, row me quietly now, as far as you can, for I am an abyss that I am trying to cross.
W. S. Merwin
Image
The story of each stone leads back to a mountain.
W. S. Merwin
Image
We are not born to survive. Only to live.
W. S. Merwin
Image
Of course there is nothing the matter with the stars It is my emptiness among them While they drift farther away in the invisible morning
W. S. Merwin
Image
Poetry is like making a joke. If you get one word wrong at the end of a joke, you've lost the whole thing.
W. S. Merwin
Image
The moment we turn over the soil we start poisoning it and we go on poisoning it all the way through... and there's probably not a river in the United States that doesn't have pesticide poisoning in it. The fish are dying. The seas are getting polluted. All of these things are happening. The rain forests are going. That's what the context is.
W. S. Merwin
Image
Every year without knowing it I have passed the day When the last fires will wave to me
W. S. Merwin
Image
Your absence has gone through me
W. S. Merwin
Image
We are the echo of the future.
W. S. Merwin
Image
I offer you what I have my Poverty
W. S. Merwin
Image
I needed my mistakes in their order to get me here
W. S. Merwin
Image
Through all of youth I was looking for you without knowing what I was looking for
W. S. Merwin
Image
My cradle was a shoe.
W. S. Merwin